There are hundreds of scientists, many who are biologists in fields of work related to evolution who reject evolution. So your argument would be the fallacy of hasty generalization.

I'd be really curious about the basis for this statement. After all, the DI can only find 400 total people willing to sign their statement, very very few of whom are biologists. And the statement they signed, far from rejecting evolution, actually says they are skeptical that natural selection explains all there is about evolution. But minus the (pretty obvious) political intent, nearly ANY biologist would sign such a statement. After all, it's commonly recognized that natural selection is NOT the only mechanism of evolution.

Note please that the statement *admits* evolution; it only expresses skepticism that one single mechanism is the sole mechanism.

Now, here you have "hundreds of scientists, MANY of them biologists" who REJECT evolution. Where'd you get them? The DI would very much love to hear from you!

And if you can NOT produce them, if you are just making this claim out of whole cloth, your argument has no merit.

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You can call it a theory with religious implications.

Only in the vernacular use of "theory" to mean "wild guess, baseless hunch, or mindless preference." It is NOT a theory in the scientific sense of being based on a solid body of evidence, making falsifiable predictions which have been well-tested (and honed as those falsifiable predictions have failed to pan out). In the scientific sense, ID has no theoretical basis whatsoever; it says nothing except "I refuse to accept that a feedback process operating over 4 billion years can produce what we see. I refuse! I refuse! So there!"

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There is no direct empirical evidence as of yet. But that doesn't mean that it is not true.

You may not wish to lean too heavily on this argument - the Flying Spaghetti Monster may take offense!

It's generally considered rational to presume the absence of anything for which no evidence exists, and that those making positive claims (that something exist) use actual evidence in support, rather than simply saying "you can't prove me wrong."

Not getting emotionally involved in proving your point - you are a wise soul. I also avoid getting emotionally involved with my own ideas. This allows me to easily change or modify them in view of new evidence or understanding.

And you and I must be historical opposites, I was raised a believer and later drop kicked that belief around the age of 30 or so. No big deal.

I just now read your article. We should drink beer and chat some time.

Cheers!

I was raised without any religion nor any kind of religious exposure. Then when I was 20 I started to practice yoga and also ate some peyote one starry moonlit night on San Diego's mission bay. The yoga philosophy was new and interesting but the peyote opened up my mind to another dimension, whereupon I "met" "God". Peyote has been used for thousands of years by many native american tribes as a religious sacrament. They believe that by eating peyote you can communicate with your "spirit guide". So essentially that was what happened to me, except my "spirit guide" showed me what he/she truly is e.g one with all of nature. I was inspired to dive into the study of yoga philosophy which would enable me years later to once again communicate with "God", although without needing peyote to see the true nature of the hidden reality all around and within us.

Beer sounds good to me

--------------When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmm, boy. Once my friend told me that he had found Jesus. I thought to myself, "WooHoo, we're rich!" It turns out he meant something different. -Jack Handey

Flint: Why stop there? All ID has to do is allege that other people have allegedly decided that there could be a hole, if they looked hard enough for it. Can't you see that gOD's existence is herein proven beyond any rational doubt?

Flint: Why stop there? All ID has to do is allege that other people have allegedly decided that there could be a hole, if they looked hard enough for it. Can't you see that gOD's existence is herein proven beyond any rational doubt?

I'll do you one better than that: all ID has to do is to find one 'evolutionist' who is a bad person and an atheist, and the whole theory of evolution is disproven, and ID is proven.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

One of the comments (user name aldo30127 ) on Demsbki's blog takes him to task for not quoting the entire paper which apparently actually supports evolution. Looks like Dembski only read the abstract, or simply quote mined and got busted for it.

Aren't they accused of that all of the time, misquoting an author/paper/position so they appear to stae the opposite of what the author(s) actually meant?

Could one of you science types confirm or deny that this is such a case please? If Dembski is in fact quote mining or misrepresenting the article I think it deserves its own thread.

I've read some of Schwartz's stuff before. He has no use for creationists, and I assume that includes those of the ID flavor. But he has a pet theory - totally at odds with all the evidence I'm familiar with - that humans are more closely related to orangutans than to chimps. And rather than abandon that theory, he's adopted the role of iconoclastic questioner of the status quo, and requires that something be seriously wrong with prevailing theory.

Aldo does indeed point out that nothing in the paper supports ID. DaveScot imagines he's accomplishing something when he then replies:

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#

aldo

Sound to me like yet another ad hoc modification of the modern synthesis to accomodate the stunning failure of its star mechanism RM+NS. RM+NS is dead and with it the modern synthesis. Its followers are worshipping a corpse in denial of the fact that it is no longer breathing. It’s starting to stink the place up so they better get on with the burial. Perhaps a postmodern synthesis will come along that explain design without intelligent agency. I hate to burst your bubble but a mechanism which merely increases the rate of random mutation above the background rate in response to evironmental stress doesn’t qualify. It’s been known for a long time that toxins cause vastly increased mutation rate. There’s absolutely no evidence that faster random mutations will turn a random process into a creative process. Sorry.

Comment by DaveScot — January 26, 2006 @ 10:14 am

To DaveScot, any perturbation of a preexisting theory is an 'ad hoc modification'. Yesterday he accused both physicists and biologists of performing these modifications, and said engineers are above that sort of nonsense.

Since I have a degree in physics, and work in RTP as an engineer, I can hardly stop laughing at that one. What a maroon.

Riiiiiiight. He even said the engineering term for such a thing is a kludge! And since ID is about design and engineering, we should expect to find kludges in the engineered creatures, but not in any "theory", no! What part of the theory of ID is not a kludge??? Retarded.

I think it was someone in Slate magazine who said that's one of the theological pitfalls of ID--it changes god from sad witness to the Fall of Man&#8482;, into an active engineer of evil machines.

That only applies if you subscribe to a biblically based religious philosophy, which I don't. Amongst religious philosophers that problem is sometimes called "the problem of evil". It or a variation of it is a common philosophical argument people make against the existence of a God. Variations of it include: If there is a God why isn't everyone good? Why is there apparent mistakes in biological systems? Why do bad things happen to good people? etc.

Hmmm...i think your misunderstanding something here.

The problem of evil is much different than the malicious or flawed designer argument.

You said it best yourself, the problem of evil is only a real problem if you believe that God is totally and completely good, and that he would never do anything to hurt us.

Theistic Evolution posits a designer of reality, but also gives us a perfectly acceptable reason why there is bad design and malicious design. It may have been necessary for the total reality to exist.

ID suggests that the designer can be detected through his design. This works perfectly well as a philosophy, but when it becomes science it causes problems. You cannot have a scientific theory that only works occasionally. Sure, ID explains well-designed systems rather well, but it readily admits that the same standard cannot be applied to poorly designed systems....If an algorithm for determining design cannot be established, then all that you are left with is a bit of observation. It is not a case of necessary evil, it is a case of being incomplete....maybe if the ID supporters can go establish a clear set of rules for determining design, the we will all take them more seriously. Bad design, however, is not necessary evil....not if the designer could do anything he wanted....necessary implies that the Designer was working inside a strict set of rules....if that is the case...then perhaps you should look into Deistic evolution...#### dirty pantheist(just kidding)

Creationism actually has a much better solution, and it does happen to be the same solution that they use for necessary evil...it just happens

IDC people have long been passionate proponents of the theory of "say it loudly and often enough, and that will make it true".

Not surprising -- that's a basic rule of religious 'debate'.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

... only now it is DaveScot that is making up the rules as he goes along.

How this can be any kind of forum for meaningful debate escapes me.

But I don't suppose that meaningful debate is what interests them? Whats the point when you know the answer™

Rule 1: No pooftasRule 2: No member of the faculty is to maltreat the abos in any way whatsoever if there's anyone watching.Rule 3: No pooftasRule 4: I don't want to catch anyone not drinking in their room after lights-out.Rule 5: No Pooftas!Rule 6: THERE IS NO RULE NUMBER SIX!Rule 7: no pooftas

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

The posts by "physicist" on Dembski's board yesterday seemed particularly well-informed. I noticed that this user tried to enter a URL, presumably to his or her website, but that Dembski's board blocked this URL.

I would like to visit that website.

If "Physicist" would be so kind as to log on to this board and post that URL, I'd be much obliged.

The posts by "physicist" on Dembski's board yesterday seemed particularly well-informed. I noticed that this user tried to enter a URL, presumably to his or her website, but that Dembski's board blocked this URL.

I would like to visit that website.

If "Physicist" would be so kind as to log on to this board and post that URL, I'd be much obliged.

That's all.

You might start a new thread here and ask him to respond. Who knows...

Yeah, "Physicist" and "Alon" are unusual specimens amid the mouth-breathers over there. Even DaveScot looks good when he's trying to explain to one of the commenters that no, ID does not exclude 'macro'evolution or speciation.

Quote

Quote (stevestory @ Jan. 25 2006,08:25)I think it was someone in Slate magazine who said that's one of the theological pitfalls of ID--it changes god from sad witness to the Fall of Man&#8482;, into an active engineer of evil machines.

That only applies if you subscribe to a biblically based religious philosophy, which I don't.

Neither do I. But it is a problem for the christian 99% of ID supporters, is really the point I was concerned with making.

British/Australian slang for a male homosexual.More often spelled 'poofter'.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

The problem of evil is much different than the malicious or flawed designer argument.

You said it best yourself, the problem of evil is only a real problem if you believe that God is totally and completely good, and that he would never do anything to hurt us.

No I didn't say that. You may want to go back and read what I did say. I said that the problem of evil is only a problem if you don't believe in reincarnation and karma.

--------------When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not, mmmmmmm, boy. Once my friend told me that he had found Jesus. I thought to myself, "WooHoo, we're rich!" It turns out he meant something different. -Jack Handey

No I didn't say that. You may want to go back and read what I did say. I said that the problem of evil is only a problem if you don't believe in reincarnation and karma.

Sorry to have summarized your statement...but Karma takes God out of the mix...therefore God allows evil to happen because you were evil...actually going off of Hinduism...you allow evil to happen because you are God.

The point is still the same...necessary evil is only a problem for theology if you believe in a God who frequently and constantly interferes and a God who is good.

However...in the flawed designer scenario...the designer does not have to be perfect. In ID, complexity is contributed to design. This makes some sense, but it is fundamentally wrong. Even if the Designer was not perfect, we should still be able to detect intelligent input due to simplicity. If you are not searching for simplicity, and only complexity in design, then you are not searching for an Intelligent Designer, you are simply searching for a Designer. This is known as the Unintelligent Designer argument. Unfortunately an algorith is completely capable of design, and Evolutionary Theory posits an algorithm for design. Therefore Evolution already has a designer, and flawed design is proof of the stupidity of the designer...in this case the algorithm of evolution.

Dembski recently suggested that ID could be used to detect manmade biological agents from natural biological agents. If we do begin to develop biological agents from scratch, then the litmus test will be the simplicty of the agent, rather than the complexity. A "designed" organism will have relatively less genetic instructions. The hallmark of design is simplicity.

I'll do you one better than that: all ID has to do is to find one 'evolutionist' who is a bad person and an atheist, and the whole theory of evolution is disproven, and ID is proven.

Arden Chatfield: I think you have boiled it down simple and well, however I think I have the upper hand with this one: All ID needs to do to provide irrefutable brain-burstingly coherent and logical and merely absolute proof (in the Mathematical sense) that a perfect designer created reality and every little molecular machine in it, except the poorly designed ones, is to find a single proponent of evolution who's just not quite Christian enough. (Ken Miller)

On "physicist", You could try searching for some of their earlier posts. When I was done posting there, published my critical essay, and DaveScot removed the links in my posts, the links on my old posts still worked. You could always register just to post an email address for physicist to email. Maybe they might see it before DS

PLEASE TAKE NOTE you denizens of “Panda’s Pathetic Pollex,” especially those at Wesley Elsberry’s inner sanctum, “After The Bar Closes,” Hi Dave. you know we love that you are reading this on your slow 56k modem. I imagine it takes a good fifteen minutes each time you switch to the modem to come over here and read. I hope you don't read my blog, because I'm going to have some pretty disparaging things up there real soon. Please don't!

Hmmm. I guess I think of the AtBC area as more of an "open meeting" than an inner sanctum. So far, folks have had to behave pretty egregiously to get bounced out of here. An inner sanctum has very stringent requirements for entry. That seems to apply far more appropriately to the UD as enforced by Springer.

I've had a lot of experience in handling moderation issues, dating to the Fidonet NEURAL_NET and EVOUTION echoes back in the days when a 56kbps modem was just a science fiction notion. (My first BBS started off with a Hayes Smartmodem 1200.) Lenny Flank was a participant back then in the EVOLUTION echo. I think in the years that I moderated that, one person was banned and two others got 30 day suspensions of posting access.